A Testimony to a Life of Faith (Rewritten)

 Written originally by an anonymous clergyman in the early 1800's:

 

Let me speak plainly and personally about what God has done in my soul, and about the path my heart now follows toward God. I have settled on this: I will not chase after great things in this world. My aim is simply to know Christ — and Christ crucified.

I move best with a gentle wind. A high-spirited heart paired with full sails is dangerous, so I prepare myself for a quieter way of living. I don’t want much, and I actively pray against wanting much. My work — my calling — is my study. I ask for whatever genuinely serves that calling, and does not distract me from it. Beyond that, I want nothing more.

A Faith That Takes Hold and Receives (Rewritten)

A person doesn’t really begin to experience the full effects of God’s work within them until they’ve taken the decisive step of consecration — described in our previous post. From that moment on, something changes. It becomes possible to see, in a new and deeper way, just how wide, high, deep, and far-reaching God’s inner work truly is. This is especially true when it comes to learning how to live by faith.

Most people who consider themselves Christians already have some experience with faith. They’ve exercised what’s often called justifying faith — trusting Christ as the source, and the only source, of forgiveness. But even so, many haven’t yet grasped what faith really is or how powerful it can be as an everyday, sustaining force in their lives. They may understand faith as something that brings pardon, but not as something that also makes us holy — and keeps us that way.

The Example of Martin Luther.

The statements made in relation to the early life and religious experience of Martin Luther, may perhaps throw some light upon this subject. Earnestly desirous of living to God sincerely and wholly, it is said of him, that he “gave himself up to all the rigors of an ascetic life. He endeavored to crucify the flesh by fastings, macerations, and watchings. Shut up in his cell, as in a prison, he was continually struggling against the evil thoughts and inclinations of his heart. Never did a cloister witness efforts more sincere and unwearied to purchase eternal happiness.”—At a somewhat later period, he was in the city of Rome; and although he had received some greater light than at the period, to which we have just referred, he seems not as yet fully to have understood, how we can be forgiven and sanctified by faith in Christ alone. “One day,” says the writer of his life; “wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the Pope to any one, who should ascend on his knees what is called Pilate’s Staircase, the poor Saxon monk was slowly climbing those steps, which they told him had been miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Rome. But, while he was going through this, [as he supposed] meritorious work, he thought he heard a voice like thunder speaking from the depth of his heart: THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. 

These words, which already on two occasions had struck upon his ear as the voice of an angel of God, resounded instantaneously and powerfully within him. He started up in terror on the steps up which he had been crawling; he was horrified at himself; and struck with shame for the degradation, to which superstition had debased him, he fled from the scene of his folly.This remarkable passage of Scripture, THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH, “had a mysterious influence,” the historian of the Protestant Reformation further remarks, on the life of Luther: 

"It was by means of that word, that God then said, Let there be light, and there was light.—It is frequently necessary, that a truth should be repeatedly presented to our minds, in order to produce its due effect. Luther had often studied the Epistles to the Romans, and yet never had justification by faith, as there taught, appeared so clear to him. He now understood that righteousness, which alone can stand in the sight of God; he was now partaker of that perfect obedience of Christ, which God imputes freely to the sinner, as soon as he looks in humility to the God-man crucified. This was the decisive epoch in the inward life of Luther. That faith, which had saved him from the fear of death, became henceforward the soul of his theology; a strong hold in ever danger, giving power to his preaching and strength to his charity, constituting a ground of peace, a motive to service, and a consolation in life and death.”

 — The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 3.

 

The Value of a Personal Faith

If we possess an appropriating faith, and if our faith be operative and strong as it should be, we shall not only gain the victory over the various temptations which beset us in the present life, but shall find ourselves rapidly forming a new and wonderful acquaintance with God. It is here, in connection with this form of faith, that we find the great and effective instrument of progress and of victory in the Interior Life. In the present life a strong and operative appropriating faith is the key which unlocks the mysteries of the divine nature, and admits the soul to a present and intuitive acquaintance with its exceeding heights and depths of purity and love. No man, who has not this faith or has it not in a high degree, can be said to live in true union with the divine mind, with God and in God. Hence we consider it important to say distinctly, in endeavoring to sketch some of the traits and principles of the interior or hidden life, that those persons will have no true and experimental knowledge of the things which we affirm, who merely believe generically and not specifically; in other words, who believe for others rather than themselves; who, in the exercise of a sort of discursive faith which embraces the mass of mankind, cannot be said to possess it individually and personally, and for their own soul's good. Let us, then, begin to learn the great lesson of faith; of faith in its general nature; of faith in its various modifications; and particularly the indispensable lesson of appropriating faith. Well has Martin Luther somewhere remarked, that the marrow of the gospel is to be found in the pronouns MEUM and NOSTRUM, MY and OUR.

— adapted from The Interior of Hidden Life (2nd edition, 1844) Part 1, Chapter 5.